Board fires 8-year director of ADEM

The board that oversees the Alabama Department of Environmental Management fired its longtime director Tuesday, criticizing him as failing to enforce conservation rules and saying the agency needs new leadership to better protect the environment.

Jim Warr has been director of ADEM for eight years but has been a force in Alabama's environmental regulation for more than 20 years.

At the opening of Tuesday's Environmental Management Commission meeting, members asked to delay all action on the agenda and move directly in to a discussion of the way Warr handled the issue of rebuilding homes on the coast after Hurricane Ivan.

Warr said ADEM followed its regulations in permitting residents to rebuild homes on the coast.

"As a practical matter, people own property, and under the constitution and even under the Coastal Management Act, they have a right to the reasonable use of their property," Warr said.

Commissioner Riley Boykin Smith, a former state conservation commissioner and Baldwin County resident, said he didn't believe all other state and federal agencies saw it the same way. After the meeting, he said he believed ADEM was allowing coastal residents to rebuild their homes too close to the beach and was violating rules that require houses at least 50 percent destroyed in hurricanes to obey current setback rules.

Immediately after that discussion, Birmingham environmentalist Pat Byington called for a vote to dismiss Warr.

"I move in light of the information we've heard today and other actions, I move to terminate the director immediately," he said.

Commissioners Sam Wainwright and Dr. William Sanders asked to go into closed session to discuss the matter. Under Alabama's Open Meetings Law, matters of good name and character can be discussed in closed meetings.

But Byington insisted that everything commissioners needed to know had taken place in meetings and was documented in the minutes.

Board members spent more time discussing whether the commission's rules allowed them to call for the vote than actually debating Warr's performance. He was fired 4-3, by Byington, Smith, Birmingham lawyer Ken Hairston and Scott Phillips, vice president of the Birmingham office of the environmental engineering firm Malcolm Pirnie.

After the vote, Sanders asked an assistant attorney general representing the commission at the meeting for an investigation of the vote.

"It looks like this was a set-up," Sanders said.

Ongoing fight:

Warr, 62, has worked with the department since its formation in 1982, first as assistant director and, since 1996, as director. Before the agency was formed, Warr headed one of its predecessors, the Alabama Water Improvement Commission.

He has run afoul of the commission in the past few years, since a group appointed by Gov. Don Siegelman gained a majority and began espousing the concerns of more activist individuals and businesses over those who saw ADEM's main job as issuing permits.

They called for more openness and formed a committee of individuals, businesspeople and special interest representatives to examine the agency. The committee concluded that ADEM had enormous credibility problems and needed to establish better relationships with the governor, Legislature, the public and regulators.

Warr did not move to appease the new coalition, sometimes appearing openly annoyed by their questions and dismissing them in open meetings. On other occasions, he ignored requests such as notifying them whenever the department or commission was sued. Instead, he instructed department attorneys to move forward with appeals and responses to lawsuits without informing the seven commissioners who were his bosses.

He continued to fight the commission late Tuesday. After the commission said that Deputy Director Marilyn Elliott would serve as acting director during a search period, Warr reminded it that under Alabama's merit system he is guaranteed a fall-back job as deputy director.

Elliott later said he told her that meant he was acting director now.

Byington said commissioners consulted with their lawyer, who said Elliott is, in fact, acting director.

Tough reputation:

Warr had a reputation as a demanding boss who brooked no opposition in getting permits issued on time and rules written on schedule. Even during his years as second-in-command at the agency, he was often called the power behind the director.

But he several times lost control of the department's basic functions. Twice the agency suspended the issuance of water pollution permits because its legal positions were struck down in court. Warr's bosses on the commission found out about them from the media.

Once, 60 landfill permits were put on hold for a year after a judge determined the agency had violated the Solid Waste Management Act. Again, commissioners did not know until it had appeared in the news.

The commission also asked Warr to more aggressively lobby the Legislature to stanch the department's budget decline. ADEM has had to rely more and more heavily on federal grants, cutting programs not funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as the Legislature cut the agency's funding each year.

Warr has not lobbied the Legislature for funding or bills that were a priority to the commission. He has said he prefers to let the Business Council of Alabama or others carry his water in the Legislature because his unpopular department's endorsement can be enough to kill a bill.

"I think Jim did the best he could with what he had," Hairston said after Tuesday's vote. "But we've got to move forward to serve the people of Alabama and protect the environment."

E-mail: kbouma@bhamnews.com